[Distutils] Contributing money to package authors/maintainers via PyPI

[Nick Coghlan]

On 29 July 2016 at 02:09, Nicholas Chammas <nicholas.chammas at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would it simplify things for the PSF if they partnered with someone who took
> care of moving the money around?

If a global payments provider came to the PSF (or the Packaging
Working Group within the PSF) and said "Here's a proposal for you to
consider and suggest amendments to before we start sending
implementation patches to Warehouse", then it would likely simplify
things somewhat (the PSF would mainly just need to review the proposal
to ensure it didn't jeopardise the PSF's non-profit status, that the
platform operator had a clear escalation process for folks sending and
receiving money, and that the terms of the proposal for individual
publishers were something the PSF was happy to promote to PyPI's
users).

However, in terms of designing such a system from scratch, picking a
default payment platform is a relatively easy part of the problem -
the design work around how the program is presented to package
publishers and users, how folks raise questions regarding problems
with money sent or received, and how we mitigate the chance of horror
stories as folks naively fail to comply with their local tax laws all
remain as complex problems to be addressed. (There may also end up
being some challenges around age verification, as PyPI doesn't
currently require you to specify your age when signing up, but also
doesn't currently provide any services where that's a potential
problem)

> The PSF, via PyPI, would bring a large, opt-in user base to their doorstep,
> and in return the payment provider (e.g. Gratipay, Salt) would cut the PSF
> some tiny slice of each transaction.
>
> I don’t know if this tweak makes the proposal more realistic (again, maybe
> the margins wouldn’t work for the provider)

It does make it more realistic, but as you note in your parenthetical
comment, it's an open question as to whether it would be worth the
investment in design and implementation effort from the side of the
platform provider (especially if they assume the PSF itself will
eventually get around to funding something along these lines).

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia